Offbeat Oregon History podcast
Summary: A daily (5-day-a-week) podcast feed of true Oregon stories -- of heroes and rascals, of shipwrecks and lost gold. Stories of shanghaied sailors a1512nd Skid Road bordellos and pirates and robbers and unsolved mysteries. An exploding whale, a couple shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. From the archives of the Offbeat Oregon History syndicated newspaper column. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
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- Artist: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)
- Copyright: Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (all commercial use OK)
Podcasts:
Somewhere in the high desert of central Oregon, there's a large cave lined with quartz crystals, which you can walk into. Where is it? There are people who know ... but they're not talking.
D'Autremont brothers destroyed mail car, killed several people in bungled attempt at a heist in 1923, in American history's last Old West-style train robbery.
Tonie Nathan, one of the founders of today's Libertarian Party, was also the party's first-ever vice-presidential candidate when she ran with John Hospers in the election that gave us "four more years" of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew
The King himself is rumored to have played at The Cottonwoods, a jumpin' joint near Lebanon, where thousands danced to the music of many of the 20th Century's greatest musicians. Today, it's a vacant lot — piled high with memories.
Until the 1980s, you could ride the "Blue Goose" up the Row River past where "Stand By Me" was shot. Today, it's a 15.6-mile bike trail.
At Henry Kaiser's Portland shipyard, a champagne bottle was getting cracked over a brand-new bow every three days throughout the war
Barnstormer Ted Barber was down to his last half-cup of gasoline when Ralph Grove rescued him by lighting up a field with the headlights of his car; Ted's old Waco 9 biplane lived to fly the next day, and so did he.
What looked like a rotting-away hunk of scrap steel was a rare artifact of Portland's World War II shipbuilding industry — but the discovery was made just a few days too late.
A selection of articles from the police coverage of Portland's racier daily newspaper, the edition of January 18, 1893.
Last and most successful attempt, in 1909, rumored to have been made by students at school, who felt they needed a new building; others suspected to be work of a grumpy old pioneer and experienced "dynamite fisherman" who lived nearby
The plush rail service left artifacts along its lines after being made obsolete by the popularity of automobiles.
Legend of a Buddhist monk's journey to a land called “Fusang” dates back to 499 A.D.; is it possible that Fusang was Oregon? Or was the whole thing a complete fabrication?
Of all the prisoners who tried to escape from Oregon's state prison, the "yeggs" were most successful — if “successful” is the right word. Their schemes for leaving the jailhouse behind included a tunneling scheme right out of “Shawshank.”
Vaudeville theaters and the moral bankruptcy they bring to our community, especially to our young and impressionable youth, according to what was intended to be a devastating article in the Portland Evening Telegram, Dec. 23, 1892.
Globe-trotting sailor chose Oregon to settle down and retire in; he'd first seen the state, and planted potatoes in it, in 1828 while his ship was being repaired
